Friendships

In recent months I have really been thinking a lot about my friendships here in LA and how much I yearn for constancy in my friendships and to fit in somewhere. Our church is somehow very segregated in our family groups and the singles groups. Several years back M and I felt like we really wanted to bridge that gap of not knowing very many single people in our church and were very intent on getting more involved in things other than the families ministry. It is now a few years later and I feel like we are straddling these two groups but not quite having that deeper community of friends in either group. Our church is also a fairly transient church and so a lot of the old friends and families we were close with are no longer there.

I often think back to my childhood in DE and the 5-6 families we saw every Friday night gather at our house for bible study and how these friendships with the parents and the kids were so tightly knit together. We were all great friends and it was a very intimate community of families that would always gather for all the major holidays and go on trips together. Now that I am a parent I find myself really wanting that not only for my kids but for myself as well. We have pockets of friends from our years here in LA and they are great friends but I guess what I miss is the set of constant, stable, steady friends and families that will hang out together after meetings and bible studies are over and see what’s going on on the weekends and plan camping trips together. I sometimes wonder if this happens more easily in suburbia and it makes me lean towards moving to an area where the people are less transient, the air feels cleaner, and the parking lots are spacious.

While I don’t think wanting a community of families and deeper friendships is bad in it of itself I feel that God has been teaching me that it is too much of an obsession of mine. Of wanting all the comforts and luxuries of a Pleasantville life. I’ve been so focused on me and what I want and coveting all these things that I am losing some perspective on who God is in my life. I’ve been trying to do a personal study on getting back to the basics of who God is and my fear of man but to be honest it is going nowhere. But despite it all He has been showing me that my time here in LA and the relationships we have made has not been wasted. We have been a blessing to others and we have most certainly been blessed by them as well.

And as I crawl out of my introverted shell and take intiative in striking up new friendships and reconnecting with old I know God is working in my life and giving me a new perspective that this life is not about me but about Him.